“We drew fur­ther in­spi­ra­tion and courage in the long queues of thou­sands of our peo­ple, who braced the cold and wet con­di­tions to pay (their) re­spects…” he said.

About 100 000 peo­ple had paid ho­mage to Man­dela dur­ing the three days his body lay in state at the Union Build­ings, in Pre­to­ria, the gov­ern­ment had said ear­lier.

“The third day closed with over 50 000 pay­ing their re­spects to our na­tional icon,” said act­ing gov­ern­ment spokes­woman Phumla Wil­liams.

The Man­dela fam­ily ex­tended its grat­i­tude to Pres­i­dent Ja­cob Zuma and the gov­ern­ment for the ar­range­ments made to en­able the peo­ple of South Africa to hon­our Man­dela in a dig­ni­fied man­ner.

“Madiba is cer­tainly at peace hav­ing been bade farewell by the peo­ple he so dearly loved, sac­ri­ficed, and was pre­pared to lay down his life for,” Matanz­ima said.

“This is a con­stant re­minder to all of us that Madiba be­longed to the peo­ple and it is only cor­rect that he was re­turned to the peo­ple be­fore his jour­ney back to Qunu.”

Matanz­ima said the fam­ily was strength­ened by the world’s prayers for Man­dela ahead of the fu­neral. – Sapa